Tim Tao's story When I was a volunteer for Youth for Christ, a colleague told me he was thinking about becoming an Anglican priest. I thought he was joking, so I laughed in his face. He was confused about the way I'd reacted and didn't understand why I thought being a vicar was ridiculous. I told him that the Church of England was dead, boring and irrelevant.   A few years later I was living in Norwich, newly married with a new job. My wife began working for a local Anglican Church, so I reluctantly dragged myself along. I soon realised how closed-minded I'd been. There was a loving community of God's people around me, whom I'd been ignoring just because they were Anglican. What an idiot!   So I began to throw myself into church, and started to appreciate it. That's when my wife left me! It was the worst period of my life. I wanted to leave the church, my job, and the city. Conversely, when I prayed, I felt God saying to me, ‘This is your home,’ and as much as I wanted to run away, I stayed. During this time communion became a much deeper experience for me; in many ways, it was reminiscent of my first steps as a new Christian—it was like I'd discovered God again. The thought of becoming a vicar began to grow in me, so I talked to my vicar.   I spent the following four years seeing three diocesan directors of ordinands, a vocational advisor, a spiritual director, and several vicars—and I studied some theology with the local diocese training board. Also, to gain some Anglican ministry experience, I became a youth worker for a church in another diocese. All this was a formative time and helped me wrestle through my hopes, fears and questions.   After being selected for training I chose Ridley Hall, Cambridge, to study. Being a trainee vicar is a mix of theological training, musing over and discussing life’s big questions, being let loose on some poor unsuspecting training parish, and crystallising your calling to Anglican Church leadership.   The space, time and community found in residential training has allowed me develop skills and spiritual practices that will hopefully sustain my ministry for years to come. Ordination training isn’t just theoretical, but grounded in actual practice. It's learning about Christ and reflecting his values, identifying God’s mission in his world today, and joining in—shaping the Church and honing it for dialogue with 21st century Western culture.